Masked Men Try to Crack an Ellensburg Safe—and Flee at the First Shout
Two armed strangers cornered a clerk in S. Bliesner’s dry goods store, but his cries brought a crowd and the robbers vanished into it.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
At 7 o'clock Thursday evening, August 28, while the streets of Ellensburg were thronged with people, two masked men entered S. Bliesner's dry goods store and each leveled a cocked revolver at the head of Aaron Wertheim, a son-in-law of Mr. Bliesner and the only occupant of the store, and demanded that he open the safe. Wertheim, who is of an excitable nature, was greatly scared at the apparition and at first hesitated, but then both men pressed him, and he, fearful that the pistol might go off, commenced hallooing: 'Fire, murder, thieves!' The men bolted for the door as soon as the first cry was raised, and, throwing aside their masks, mingled with the crowd which had now gathered, and their identity was lost. The attempted robbery was a bold one, but no more so than could be expected in a town along the line of railroad construction, where large numbers of lawless men are gathered.
“Fire, murder, thieves!”
Ellensburg in the 1880s was a railroad-construction boomtown, full of newcomers, cash and strangers—conditions that made armed robbery a recurring fear. The clerk’s quick shout turned a quiet store into a crowd scene and let the robbers disappear into the street. Boomtown policing was thin, and reputation and luck often did the work of a police force.
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